Wyomissing Cut List Hits Parade, Concerts, Leaf Disposal

Wyomissing Borough's Memorial Day Parade, its summer concerts and movies in the park, the Egg Hunt, Touch a Truck and the money it spends to haul away collected leaves are on a cut list Interim Borough Manager Eden Ratliff sent to council Nov. 2, ahead of the Tuesday, Nov. 10, 7 p.m. meeting at which the borough's budget calendar calls for council to adopt and advertise a preliminary 2027 budget. The 21-page memo pairs $2,063,337 in cuts with two tax options: 3 or 4 more mills, which would add $401 or $534 a year on the median home in the borough, assessed at $133,500 (pp. 2-3). A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value.

The memo describes the newest items as "operational cuts requested by some members of Council at the October 28th meeting," and says: "Staff are not proposing these reductions, but rather, seeking policy guidance from the Borough Council as it relates to these offerings" (p. 1).

No decision is on the record. Council was due to take up the memo Nov. 3, when it reconvened the special budget meeting it opened Oct. 28; the posted agenda for that night lists "2027 Budget Development Presentations" as its only business item. As of Wednesday the borough had posted no minutes or summary of what council said or decided Nov. 3; the Agenda Center lists nothing newer than that agenda. The borough has posted a video of the Nov. 3 session on its meeting-video page, a 1.75-gigabyte file we have not reviewed; any direction council gave that night would be in it. The borough released the memo through a news flash labeled "pre-meeting information," and the memo itself was still changing the day of the meeting: its scenario page is headed "Updated for Nov 3, 2026" and carries the footer "Budget Scenarios 11.3.2026 CORRECTED.xlsx Printed 11/03/2026," while the other pages are printed Nov. 2 (pp. 2-4), and the file's own metadata shows it was last modified at 6:18 p.m. Nov. 3, 42 minutes before the meeting.

What some on council asked to cut

The memo's second page is a 50-line table of items removed from the draft budget since Oct. 22, each dated. Ten lines are dated Nov. 2, after the Oct. 28 hearing. The service cuts among them are leaf collection disposal ($55,000) and leaf collection materials and supplies ($20,000), the Memorial Day Parade ($11,000), Summer Concerts in the Park ($10,000), Movies in the Park ($4,000), the Egg Hunt ($2,500) and Touch a Truck ($1,000). Two are staffing: a third requested public works laborer ($95,869) is out, and a new accounts-receivable clerk would start April 1 instead of Jan. 1, saving $28,435 (p. 2). By our sum those nine lines cut $227,804. The tenth Nov. 2 line defers $122,500 of fire-department add-ons, "station alerting, fitness, lockers, water softener, computers," which the table says are "deferred in Scenario 4" (p. 2).

The restated budget pages zero the parade, concert, movie, Egg Hunt and Touch a Truck lines for 2027; the borough spent $9,765, $7,690, $2,533, $1,115 and $0 on them through Sept. 30 of this year (p. 10). The Fourth of July ($42,000), the Fish Rodeo ($6,750), the Lighting of the Greens ($6,500) and the Fall Festival ($7,000) stay in (p. 10).

In 2026 the borough budgeted leaf collection in its refuse fund: $156,000 for labor, $20,000 for materials and $55,000 for disposal (p. 20). The 2027 draft moves leaf collection into the general fund, keeps $197,431 for labor and zeroes the materials and disposal lines (p. 9). The memo does not say how the borough would collect leaves without money to dispose of them or buy supplies.

The memo also adds $90,000 of revenue to the general fund, which it says "can be both a combination of fee increases and cost decreases to bring the Summer Playground Program and Wyomissing Pool operations to neutral financial impact," because "the Playground Program loses $30,000/year, and the Wyomissing Pool operations, loses $60,000/year" (p. 1). The budget pages book it as fees: pool fees rise to $222,000 from the $162,000 budgeted for 2026, and playground fees to $105,700 from $82,000 (p. 5).

$2.06 million cut, $8.1 million put off

The table's totals are "Cut from the 2027 budget (Out + Reduced) $2,063,337" and "Deferred to future years (not cut) $8,122,500" (p. 2). Deferred means the item is pushed to a later budget rather than dropped.

Most of the cuts are dated Oct. 22 and 23, before the hearing. The largest are parks projects: the Stone House Pond leak repair ($325,000), Huyett House and grounds repairs ($150,000), Reith's Grist Mill spring house repairs ($150,000), tennis court repairs and resurfacing ($120,000, plus $12,500 for drainage), Berkshire Heights parking lot paving ($100,000), Goodman Barn repairs ($100,000) and the High Road storm sewer ($100,000). On the staffing side, two of three requested public works laborers ($191,738), a new accountant ($127,080) and a new Recreation Program Coordinator ($115,315) are out, the rehire salary for a recreation director is reduced by $20,000, and the fire department's two requested chief vehicles become one ($90,000) (p. 2).

The deferrals are the big-ticket items from our Oct. 29 story: the $5,000,000 fire station renovation, dated Oct. 22; the $2,500,000 new tower ladder, dated Oct. 24; and $500,000 of the 4th and Oley pump station project, which "moves to 2028" so the work can "start mid-year" (p. 2). The fire fund's revenue page still carries a $250,000 state Local Share Account grant for the tower ladder (p. 11).

Two scenarios, restated

The Oct. 28 document laid out five scenarios and recommended two, as our earlier story reported. The new scenario page drops the other three and restates Scenarios 3 and 4 with the cuts (p. 3).

	Scenario 3: three mills, borrow for all capital	Scenario 4: four mills, pay $450,000 cash, borrow the rest
Total borough millage	9.65	10.65
Added tax, median home	$401	$534
New borrowing, 2027	$2,537,158 (unchanged)	$1,964,658 (was $1,581,463)
New annual debt service, full year from 2028	$410,137 (unchanged)	$279,727 (was $192,438)
2027 surplus or (deficit)	($182,110) (was ($533,792))	$373,572 (was $245,250)
General fund balance, Dec. 31, 2027	$2,157,397 (was $1,805,715)	$2,713,079 (was $2,584,757)
Reserves as a share of spending	12.1% (was 9.8%)	15.2% (was 14.3%)

The "was" figures are from the Oct. 28 table (Oct. 26 document, p. 5); the new ones are from the memo (p. 3). Debt service is the yearly principal and interest on borrowed money. Reserves, or fund balance, are what is left in the general fund at year's end; the table labels the target 17 percent, and both scenarios still fall short of it (p. 3). The Oct. 28 memo had cited a 22 percent target, a conflict our earlier story noted.

Scenario 4's borrowing rises by $383,195 and its debt service by $87,289 even as its surplus grows, and the memo does not say why, but its table does: by our arithmetic Scenario 4's $450,000 cash plus $1,964,658 borrowed is $2,414,658, which is Scenario 3's $2,537,158 less the $122,500 of fire add-ons the cut list marks "deferred in Scenario 4." On Oct. 28 the four-mill plan covered $505,695 less capital than the three-mill plan; it now covers all of it but those add-ons. The 6.65 mills both scenarios build on is the borough's own count: the county's 2026 tax-rate table lists Wyomissing at 5.15 mills, and the borough's Oct. 13 presentation adds half a mill each for roads, EMS and fire to reach 6.65 (slides 15-16).

What the restated budget shows

The general fund pages, "updated for November 3, 2026," project $14,667,300 in 2027 revenue, against a restated 2026 budget of $15,814,700, and $20,107,882 in expenses, including $5,279,605 in transfers to the fire, capital and debt service funds. That leaves a $5,440,582 gap before any tax increase (pp. 5, 10-11), down from the $5,694,842 in the Oct. 25 version our earlier story described. A "changes for 11/3" column shows the Nov. 2 edits: $161,935 less spending and $90,000 more revenue (pp. 5, 11).

That column does not match the cut list line for line: it includes a $30,000 reduction in borough building maintenance that appears nowhere on the cut list (p. 8), and the $95,869 laborer appears in none of its lines (pp. 8-9). The consultant lines our earlier story flagged are unchanged: $350,000 in Stonehill Ratliff lines for the interim manager and contracted services, $250,000 in Transcend Finance lines for the interim finance director, and a $160,000 communications, marketing and public relations firm (pp. 5, 7).

What Nov. 10 decides and how to weigh in

The borough's budget calendar, repeated on slide 2 of the Oct. 28 presentation, reads "11/10 Adopt and Advertise Preliminary Budget," then "12/2 Budget Town Hall" and "12/15 Special Meeting to Adopt Budget." The borough's 2027 Budget page lists the December dates in its calendar box, though its "next budget meeting" banner still read "10/28 Public Hearing - Decision Making" on Wednesday. A preliminary budget is the draft council puts on public display before the final vote, so Nov. 10 is when council picks a tax rate and a cut list to show residents, not when the budget becomes law.

The meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 7 p.m. at Wyomissing Borough Hall, 22 Reading Blvd.; the borough's calendar entry blocks it from 7 to 9 p.m. and titles it "Council Meeting | Public Hearing." The hearing is on the Berkshire Mall overlay ordinance, which we covered in a separate preview, so the budget will share the night with the mall. As of Nov. 4 the Agenda Center listed no Nov. 10 agenda, so the order of business is not yet public. Council's posted agendas this fall have carried public-comment periods at the start and end of each meeting. Borough Hall is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 610-376-7481. Our guide explains how to find any Berks municipality's meeting schedule.